Creator of HBO's Looking hopeful the gay dramedy will get a second season

HBO’s Looking, a dramedy about three gay best friends nagivating life and love in present day San Francisco, will air the sixth of its eight episodes on Sunday (23 February).

The show’s creator, Mike Lannan, tells Gay Star News he’s very hopeful there will be a second season of the show which has had far lower ratings than its lead-in show, Girls.

‘I’m really hopeful. HBO has been really supportive of the show from the beginning and they’ve been really proud of it,’ Lannan said Tuesday (18 February) after a special Writers Guild of America panel on the show in Los Angeles.

Lannan has all kinds of ideas for further adventures of central characters Patrick (Jonathan Groff), Agustin (Frankie J Alvarez) and Dom (Murray Bartlett).

‘We’re thinking about it in preparation of getting picked up but we can’t really work on it until we get that signal,’ he said. ‘It could be any time – it could be in the next few weeks.’

The show’s premiere episode last month drew 338,000 viewers on its first airing which was a dramatic fall from the 779,000 viewers that its lead-in, Girls, had.

Nick Hall, the HBO executive behind the show, tells GSN that there is a bigger picture to be considered than simply first night ratings.

‘When places are reporting numbers they do it in a very archaic way which is only reporting the initial one airing audience,’ said Fall, director of comedy for HBO.

‘For us we look at it for the week, we look at it On Demand, we look at HBO Go. Each of the episodes, they are cuming nicely.’

‘I don’t think anybody went into this show expecting it was going to have like large numbers,’ Fall adds. ‘Each of our shows that we do are kind of designed to meet certain expectations.’

‘Of course you always want your show to be seen by as many people as possible but I do think it’s been really critically revered and it’s a show that people are talking about in a good way.’